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L’Estrange His Life: Public and Persona in the Life and Career of Sir Roger L’Estrange, 1616-1704
Posted on March 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis dissertation examines the life and career of Roger L’Estrange, an unsuccessful soldier and prisoner for the king, royalist pamphleteer and Tory apologist, licenser of books and Surveyor of the Press, scourge of Protestant dissent and the first Whig party, literary translator and amateur musician. -
More Than Just Kidd’s Play
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsTom Wareham examines the role played by a legendary yet ill-fated pirate in the consolidation of England’s early trading empire. -
Cromwell, Charles II and the Naseby: Ship of State
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe fortunes of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II and the regard in which their successive regimes came to be held were mirrored in the fate of one of their mightiest naval vessels, as Patrick Little explains. -
Violence and duelling between exiled courtiers: the case of the Caroline Stuart Court in exile, c. 1649-c. 1660
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsYet, though we can clearly say that the duel was not unique to the exiled Caroline Stuart Court, we must still concede that such acts of violence occurred quite frequently there. This was especially true from 1656-59, when Charles II’s Court was in the Spanish Netherlands, and this tendency to conflict was even remarked upon by contemporary observers. -
Dissecting the Living: Vivisection in Early Modern England
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe term ‘vivisection’, which refers to the act of dissecting a live animal or human being, was coined in 1709. Yet, it celebrated a long tradition reaching back thousands of years. One of the earliest recorded accounts dates from 500 B.C., when Alcmaeon of Croton severed the optic nerves of live animals in order to understand how it affected their vision. -
Protestant Bishops in Restoration England
Posted on September 7, 2012 | No CommentsCensure provoked defence; from the 1570s onwards, the English episcopate had faced various demands for further reform or else its total extirpation. -
‘A Suffering People’: English Quakers and Their Neighbours c.1650–c.1700
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsPopular hostility towards Quakers has attracted little attention from historians. Studies of crowds and riots in the Restoration period make little mention of violence against Quakers -
“Putting to Hazard a Certainty”: Lotteries and the Romance of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century England
Posted on September 1, 2012 | No CommentsI hope to enrich our understanding of the early decades of the Financial Revolution by examining a financial instrument that has received much less attention, at least from literary scholars with interests in financial and economic history: the lottery. I focus on the lottery to show the deep foundations of the Financial Revolution in gambling. -
Anne Askew and Margaret Fell: Religious Women in Prison And Technologies of the Self
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsBoth Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Fell (1614-1702) were imprisoned and wrote significant writings in jail. In prison Askew wrote The First Examination (1546) and The Latter Examination (1547); Fell wrote Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666). The two Protestants’ imprisonment indicates not only their struggle for freedom of their Protestant belief but also the government’s arbitrary exercise of institutional power over non-conforming women. -
Discipline and local government in the Diocese of Durham, 1660-72
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsWhen John Cosin became Bishop of Durham in 1660, he faced a considerable task in re-asserting episcopal control and government, restoring the dignity and authority of the Church of England, establishing respect for i t , enforcing conformity and suppressing political and religious opposition. -
Functional Goods and Fancies: The Production and Consumption of Consumer Goods in Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham c. 1680-1780
Posted on August 22, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis explores the place of consumer goods in the culturally changing environment of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. It specifically focuses on the production and consumption of consumer goods in Northumberland, Newcastle and Durham between c. 1680 to 1780. -
From Puritanism to Nonconformity, 1600 – 89: a study in the development of Protestant Dissent, with special reference to Yorkshire
Posted on August 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe definition of Protestant Dissent is a much easier matter, for Dissent was defined in 1660-2 by the refusal of some puritans to accept the new settlement of the Church and their decision to seek religious life elsewhere. -
An examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAn examination of interpretations of ghosts from the reformation to the close of the Seventeenth Century. -
‘The art of dancing, demonstrated by characters and figures’: French and English sources for court and theatre dance, 1700-1750
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsIn the early seventeenth century, during the reigns of James I and Charles I, England developed its own court entertainment in the masque - many of them devised by the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson in collaboration with the architect and designer Inigo Jones. -
Emasculated subjects and subjugated wives: discourses of domination in John Banks’s Vertue Betray’d (1682)
Posted on July 22, 2012 | No CommentsBetween 1681 and 1704, John Banks prepared for the stage four tragedies dealing with British history; three of them were centered on the meteoric rise and fall of doomed queens: Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Jane Gray. -
“Puffs of Smoke, Puffs of Praise”: Reconsidering John Evelyn’s Fumifugium
Posted on July 18, 2012 | No CommentsJohn Evelyn's Fumifugium; or, The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated (1661) is an example both of how books considered as objects might illuminate the practice of printing in seventeenth-century England, and of how the initial significance of a book's content can be misjudged when its status as a manufactured object is overlooked. -
“I am her majesty’s subject”: Prince George of Denmark and the transformation of the English male consort
Posted on July 18, 2012 | No CommentsAmid the historical attention paid to the Revolution of 1688/89 and the Act of Settlement of 1701, an explanation for the constitutional demise of the male consort has never emerged. -
Oh, what a lovely war? War, taxation, and public opinion in England, 1624-29
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did Charles I encounter such difficulties in funding his war? One factor was perhaps the financial illiteracy of a political elite which failed to comprehend the cost of warfare in an age of military revolution. -
Britain 1660-1714: competing historiographies
Posted on June 3, 2012 | No Comments“In the 1970s and 1980s”, Alan Houston and Steve Pincus added in their introduction to A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (2001), “at the exact high point of revisionist scholarship in early-modern English historiography, modernization theory came under fierce attack throughout the social sciences. -
Destructive Defiance: Catholic and Protestant Iconoclasm in England, 1550-1585
Posted on June 1, 2012 | No CommentsAny future studies on iconoclasm must pay more careful attention to the subject of iconoclasm, the visual image. We must understand how people perceived acceptable and unacceptable images, examining how people distinguished between the two. In England, certain images were allowed in one context and destroyed in another. -
Jews and crypto-Jews in sixteenth and seventeenth century England
Posted on June 1, 2012 | No CommentsOn 31 October 1655 Menasseh waited outside the door as the Council of State sat in session. Menasseh hoped to present copies of his books to members of the Council and eventually a clerk went out to receive them. Among these books was probably a recently written work arguing the case for Jewish readmission ... -
Anatomizing the social body: representing the plague in London, 1665
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will analyze the motivations behind a broadsheet produced in response to the outbreak of bubonic plague in the City of London in 1665. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on March 26, 2012 | No CommentsAlice Thornton’s accounts of the pains and perils of childbirth, including this passage on the birth of her fifth child, have attracted the attention of a number of recent historians as particularly detailed and evocative examples of personal testimony to the experience of giving birth in the early modern period. -
Below stairs at Arbury Hall: Sir Richard Newdigate and his household staff, c.1670–1710
Posted on February 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn all these spheres of activity, Newdigate had a preference for micro-management which sat very uneasily with his irascible, volatile personality. He was, therefore, the worst type of control-freak: that is,none with time on his hands -
The English Diplomatic Corps, 1649-1660: a comparison Of the diplomats of the Commonwealth and Protectorate and of Charles II
Posted on January 3, 2012 | No CommentsOther historians have conducted prosopographical studies of British diplomats, but no one has studied the diplomats during the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. -
High crimes: the law of treason in late Stuart Britain
Posted on December 14, 2011 | No CommentsThis is the first work on treason to concentrate exclusively on the all important years between the Restoration and the Union, when the number of trials for this most serious of all crimes reached new heights and during which time the procedural law of treason underwent significant changes. -
The contexts and contours of British economic literature, 1660-1760
Posted on December 12, 2011 | No CommentsIn the century after the Restoration of Charles II there was a remarkable outpouring of thinking about economic issues in Britain, of exploring the ways and means to prosperity and plenty. -
Signs and Wonders and the English Civil War
Posted on November 29, 2011 | No CommentsChris Durston records how the monstrous and the supernatural were seized on by political and religious factions in seventeenth century England as signs of judgment. -
All Singing, All Dancing
Posted on November 22, 2011 | No CommentsSexually explicit jigs were a major part of the attraction of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration stage, as Lucie Skeaping explains. -
In Defense of the Monarchy: The Restoration of Charles Stuart
Posted on November 12, 2011 | No CommentsCharles was determined to go home as King; his mind was full of doubt and his heart was bursting with contradictory emotions. He must not dare to hope, but how could he not? -
The Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture: Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700
Posted on October 25, 2011 | No CommentsThe Ghost in Early Modern Protestant Culture:Shifting perceptions of the afterlife, 1450-1700 McKeever, Amanda Jane PhD Thesis, Philosophy, University of Sussex, September 27, (2010) Abstract My thesis seeks to address... -
The bio-medical pursuits of Christopher Wren
Posted on October 16, 2011 | No CommentsI suppose that anyone who reads the English language sooner or later crosses the path of Christopher Wren. A meteorologist, an astronomer... -
Margaret Cavendish’s Imaginary Friends
Posted on October 15, 2011 | No CommentsMargaret Cavendish’s Imaginary Friends Rachel Warburton - Lakehead University Session: “English Epistolary Friendships" Paper given at the conference: Friendship In Pre-Modern Europe (1300-1700) This paper analysed Margaret Cavendish’s sociable letters. They... -
Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope
Posted on October 9, 2011 | No CommentsIn this essay, an analysis of the contemporary and subsequent treatment of Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope will demonstrate the existence of this triple bias in Tudor historiography. -
Political Bodies and Animal Economies: Reconsidering the Relationship between Healthcare and Statecraft in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on October 7, 2011 | No CommentsPolitical Bodies and Animal Economies: Reconsidering theRelationship between Healthcare and Statecraft in Late Seventeenth-Century England Ridge, Steve (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London) Ex... -
The Muse of Mount Orgueil: a reading of William Prynne’s poetry
Posted on May 5, 2010 | No CommentsThe Muse of Mount Orgueil: a reading of William Prynne’s poetry Green, Paul D. Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (September, 2004) Abstract The author of Histriomastix, the mortal enemy of... -
“That vain Animal”: Rochester’s Satyr and the Theriophilic Paradox
Posted on April 24, 2010 | No Comments"That vain Animal": Rochester's Satyr and the Theriophilic Paradox Rosenfeld, Nancy Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September 2003) Abstract The Satyr against Reason and Mankind by John Wilmot, second Earl... -
“To stand upright will ask thee skill”: The Pinnacle and the Paradigm
Posted on April 5, 2010 | No Comments"To stand upright will ask thee skill": The Pinnacle and the Paradigm Barton, Carol Early Modern Literary Studies 6.2 (September, 2000) Abstract Paradise Regain'd was considered inferior to the diffuse... -
“In this dark world and wide”: Samson Agonistes and the Meaning of Christian Heroism
Posted on April 1, 2010 | No Comments"In this dark world and wide": Samson Agonistes and the Meaning of Christian Heroism Barton, Carol Early Modern Literary Studies 5.2 (September, 1999) Abstract In this essay, I argue that... -
England as Israel in Milton’s Writings
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No CommentsEngland as Israel in Milton's Writings Hale, John K. Early Modern Literary Studies 2.2 (August 1996): Contents Abstract By surveying Milton's use and non-use of certain biblical images, this essay... -
Milton’s Titles
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No CommentsMilton’s Titles Hale, John K. Early Modern Literary Studies 13.1 (May, 2007) Abstract Milton’s titling practices are examined from four main standpoints. First, ideas about titling as a speech-act are... -
“With Honour Quit the Fort”: Ambivalent Colonialism in Dryden’s Amboyna
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No Comments“With Honour Quit the Fort”: Ambivalent Colonialism in Dryden’s Amboyna Schille, Candy B. K. Early Modern Literary Studies 12.1 (May, 2006) Abstract The essay argues that Amboyna, its subject and... -
Love, Death and Resurrection in Tragicomedies by Seventeenth-Century English Women Dramatists
Posted on March 16, 2010 | No CommentsLove, Death and Resurrection in Tragicomedies by Seventeenth-Century English Women Dramatists Corporaal, Marguérite Early Modern Literary Studies 12.1 (May, 2006) Abstract In tragicomedies by seventeenth-century English women, such as Lady... -
Mourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost
Posted on March 15, 2010 | No CommentsMourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost Hodgson, Elizabeth M. A. Early Modern Literary Studies 11.1 (May, 2005) Abstract Hamlet’s mourning black seems to be a form of armour which... -
Romancing Multiplicity: Female Subjectivity and the Body Divisible in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World
Posted on March 8, 2010 | No CommentsRomancing Multiplicity: Female Subjectivity and the Body Divisible in Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World Wagner, Geraldine Early Modern Literary Studies 9.1 (May 2003) Abstract By exploring the mutually constitutive relationship between... -
Paradise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell
Posted on March 7, 2010 | No CommentsParadise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell Steggle, Matthew Early Modern Literary Studies 7.1/ Special Issue 8 (May, 2001) Abstract What does Hell sound like? Almost all the accounts of... -
Marvell’s Now
Posted on February 23, 2010 | No CommentsMarvell's Now Raman, Shankar Early Modern Culture, No. 6 (2007) Abstract If the subsequent line -- "So restless Cromwell could not cease" -- identifies the "forward youth" with the man... -
Conning the “Overseers”: Women’s Illicit Work in Behn’s “The Adventure of the Black Lady”
Posted on February 23, 2010 | No CommentsConning the "Overseers": Women's Illicit Work in Behn's "The Adventure of the Black Lady" Ferguson, Margaret Early Modern Culture, No. 5 (2006) Abstract Having spent some fifteen years thinking (off... -
Why Poetry?
Posted on January 21, 2010 | No CommentsWhy Poetry? Keith, Jennifer The Eighteenth Century, Volume 48, Number 1, Spring 2007 Abstract In a cultural climate and scholarly marketplace that increasingly marginalize poetry, especially eighteenth-century poetry, relatively few... -
The politics of London air : John Evelyn’s ‘Fumifugium’ and the Restoration
Posted on December 17, 2009 | No CommentsThe politics of London air : John Evelyn's 'Fumifugium' and the Restoration By Mark Jenner The Historical Journal, Vol.38:3 (1995) Abstract: Historians have commonly described John Evelyn's pamphlet about London...